Intel investigating CPU instability issues after South Korean Tekken 8 players kick up a fuss: 'Intel is aware of problems that occur when executing certain tasks'

Earlier this year, we reported that a division of Epic Games was claiming that the increasing number of crashes in games using Unreal Engine was down to Intel's high-end CPUs. The issue has spread further afield, with South Korean players of Tekken 8, developed on Unreal Engine 5, experiencing exactly the same problem and along with reports of chips failing within a few weeks of purchase, Intel is now officially investigating the matter.

News of this issue has been widespread (Videocardz, Ars Technica, Twitter) and as before, it mostly concerns Intel's Core i9 processors, such as the 13900K, but plenty of other models also appear to be affected. If you own one of these and have experienced a game crashing, often generating a blue screen with 'out of video memory' error message, then you're in good company.

The exact number of people with the issue is hard to estimate but ZDNet Korea contacted the chip giant to ask if it was aware of the reports. Intel's reply makes it clear that there's sufficient evidence to warrant a proper investigation:

«Intel is aware of problems that occur when executing certain tasks on 13th and 14th generation core processors for desktop PCs, and is analyzing them with major affiliates.»

Affiliates in this instance being OEM system builders and motherboard manufacturers. The reason why the latter are being included is because the likes of Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and many more all have BIOS settings that go well past Intel's default power and current limits—sometimes the motherboards are set up like that, right out of the box.

Take the Core i9 14900K, for example. It has two power limits, PL1 and PL2, with the former being the maximum for long periods of time and the other just for a set number of seconds. Intel's datasheets show that the standard figures for these are 125 and 253 W, with a maximum current of 307 A permitted.

I've been using two Z790 motherboards, from Asus and ASRock, and both of them ignore some or all of those limits with